Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern varieties of Chinese. As such, many linguists[who?] consider Teochew one of the most conservative Chinese dialects.[6]

Teochew is a member of the Southern Min or Min Nan dialect group, which in turn constitutes a part of Min Chinese, one of the seven major dialect groups of Chinese. As with other varieties of Chinese, it is not very mutually intelligible with other dialect groups of China but is mutually intelligible with some other Southern dialects, such as those of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou.[citation needed] Even within the Teochew varieties, there is substantial variation in phonology between different regions of Chaoshan and between different Teochew communities overseas.

The Chaoshan dialect in China be roughly divided into three sub-groups defined by physically proximate areas:

Modern Teochew is a variety of Southern Min. From the 9th to 15th century, groups of Min-speaking Han Chinese migrated south from Fujian to the coastal region of eastern Guangdong now known as Chaoshan. Due to its geographical isolation from other Southern Min communities of Fujian, Teochew evolved into a separate variety.

The Chaoshan region, which includes the cities of Chaozhou and Shantou, is where the standard dialect of Teochew (Chaoshan dialact) is spoken. Parts of the Hakka-speaking regions of Jiexi County, Dabu County and Fengshun, are also contain communities of Teochew speakers.

As Chaoshan was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th to 20th centuries, a considerable Overseas Chinese community in that region is Teochew-speaking. In particular, the Teochew people settled in significant numbers in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, where they form the largest Chinese dialect group. Teochew-speakers form a minority among Chinese communities in Vietnam, Malaysia (especially in the states of Johor and Selangor), Singapore, and Indonesia (especially in West Kalimantan on Borneo). Waves of migration from Chaoshan to Hong Kong, especially after the communist victory of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, has also resulted in a community there, although most descendants now primarily speak Cantonese.

Teochew speakers are also found among overseas Chinese communities in Japan and the Western world (notably in the United States, Canada, France and Australia), a result of both direct emigration from Chaoshan to these nations and secondary emigration from Southeast Asia.

In Singapore, due to influences from the media and the government such as the Speak Mandarin Campaign, Chinese Singaporeans whose ancestral language is Teochew are either converting to English, Standard Chinese or Hokkien, the last of which Teochew shares a certain degree of mutual intelligibility. Teochew remains the ancestral language of many Chinese people in Singapore - Teochew people are the second largest Chinese group in Singapore, after the Hokkien - although Mandarin is gradually supplanting Teochew as their mother tongue, especially among the younger generations. In Thailand, particularly in Bangkok, Teochew is still spoken among older ethnic Chinese Thai citizens; however, the younger generation tends to learn Standard Chinese as a third language after Thai and English.

Teochew was never popular in Chinese communities in Japan and South Korea since most of the Teochew people who migrated to these countries are secondary immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most of them are second generation people from Hong Kong and Taiwan who speak Cantonese and Mandarin as well as Korean and Japanese, leaving Teochew to be spoken mostly by elders.

Chaozhou children are introduced to Standard Chinese as early as in kindergarten; however, Chaozhou remains the primary medium of instruction. In the early years of primary education, Mandarin becomes the sole language of instruction, although students typically continue to talk to one another in Chaozhou. Mandarin is widely understood, however minimally, by most younger Chaozhou speakers, but the elderly usually do not speak Mandarin since teaching was done in the local vernacular in the past.

Native Chaozhou speakers find the neutral tone in Mandarin hardest to master. Chaozhou has lost the alveolar nasal ending [-n] and so the people often replace the sound in Mandarin with the velar nasal[-ŋ]. None of the southern Min dialects have a front rounded vowel, therefore a typical Chaozhou accent supplants the unrounded counterpart [i] for [y]. Chaozhou, like its ancient ancestor, lacks labio-dentals; people therefore substitute [h] or [hu] for [f] when they speak Mandarin. Chaozhou does not have any of the retroflex consonants in the northern dialects, so they pronounce [ts], [tsʰ], [s], and [z] instead of [tʂ], [tʂʰ], [ʂ] and [ʐ].[original research?]

Since Chao'an, Raoping and Jieyang border the Hakka-speaking region in the north, some people in these regions speak Hakka, though they can usually speak Chaozhou as well. Chaozhou people have historically had a great deal of contact with the Hakka people, but Hakka has had little, if any, influence on Chaozhou. Similarly, in Dabu and Fengshun, where the Chaozhou- and Hakka-speaking regions meet, Chaozhou is also spoken although Hakka remains the primary form of Chinese spoken there.

Teochew, like other Southern Min varieties, is one of the few modern Sinitic languages which have voicedobstruents (stops, fricatives and affricates); however, unlike Wu and Xiang Chinese, the Teochew voiced stops and fricatives did not evolve from Middle Chinese voiced obstruents, but from nasals. The voiced stops [b] and [ɡ] and also [l] are voicelessly prenasalised[ᵐ̥b], [ᵑ̊ɡ], [ⁿ̥ɺ], respectively. They are in complementary distribution with the tenuis stops [p t k], occurring before nasal vowels and nasal codas, whereas the tenuis stops occur before oral vowels and stop codas. The voiced affricate dz, initial in such words as 字(dzi˩), 二(dzi˧˥), 然(dziaŋ˥), 若(dziak˦) loses its affricate property with some younger speakers abroad, and is relaxed to [z].

Southern Min dialects are typified by a lack of labiodentals, as illustrated below:

Syllables in Teochew contain an onset consonant, a medial glide, a nucleus, usually in the form of a vowel, but can also be occupied by a syllabic consonant like [ŋ], and a final consonant. All the elements of the syllable except for the nucleus are optional, which means a vowel or a syllabic consonant alone can stand as a fully-fledged syllable.

Teochew finals consist maximally of a medial, nucleus and coda. The medial can be i or u, the nucleus can be a monophthong or diphthong, and the coda can be a nasal or a stop. A syllable must consist minimally of a vowel nucleus or syllabic nasal.

The personal pronouns in Teochew, like in other Chinese varieties, do not show case marking, therefore 我[ua] means both I and me and 伊人[iŋ] means they and them. The southern Min dialects, like some northern dialects, have a distinction between an inclusive and exclusive we, meaning that when the addressee is being included, the inclusive pronoun 俺[naŋ] would be used, otherwise 阮[ŋ]. No other southern Chinese variety has this distinction.

Teochew does not distinguish the possessive pronouns from the possessive adjectives. As a general rule, the possessive pronouns or adjectives are formed by adding the genitive or possessive marker 個 [kai5] to their respective personal pronouns, as summarised below:

also 蜀 [tsek8] (original character)
also 弌 (obsolete)
also [ik4] as the last digit of a 2-or-more-digit number e.g. 二十一 [dzi6 tsap8 ik4]
or days of a month e.g. 一號 [ik4 ho7]
or as an ordinal number e.g. 第一 [tõĩ6 ik4]
also 么(T) or 幺(S) [iou1] when used in phone numbers etc.

also 弍 (obsolete)
also 貳(T) or 贰(S)
also [dzi6] as the last digit of a 2-or-more-digit number e.g. 三十二 [sã1 tsap8 dzi6]
or days of a month e.g. 二號 [dzi6 ho7]
or as an ordinal number e.g. 第二 [tõĩ6 dzi6].

In Teochew passive construction, the agentphraseby somebody always has to be present, and is introduced by either 乞[kʰoiʔ˦] (some speakers use [kʰəʔ] or [kʰiəʔ] instead) or 分[puŋ˧], even though it is in fact a zero or indefinite agent as in:

伊分人刣掉。

[i˧ puŋ˧naŋ˥ tʰai˥ tiou˩]

S/he was killed (by someone).

While in Mandarin one can have the agent introducer 被; bèi or 給; gěi alone without the agent itself, it is not grammatical to say

*個杯分敲掉。

[kai˥ pue˧ puŋ˧ kʰa˧ tiou˩]

The cup was broken.

cf. Mandarin 杯子給打破了; bēizi gěi dǎ pòle)

Instead, we have to say:

個杯分人敲掉。

[kai˥ pue˧ puŋ˧ naŋ˥ kʰa˧ tiou˩]

The cup was broken.

Even though this 人[naŋ˥] is unknown.

Note also that the agent phrase 分人[puŋ˧ naŋ˥] always comes immediately after the subject, not at the end of the sentence or between the auxiliary and the past participle like in some European languages (e.g. German, Dutch)

It must be noted that the 過- or 比-construction must involve two or more nouns to be compared; an ill-formed sentence will be yielded when only one is being mentioned:

*伊雅過 (?)

Teochew is different from English, where the second noun being compared can be left out ("Tatyana is more beautiful (than Lisa)". In cases like this, the 夭-construction must be used instead:

伊夭雅。

[i1 iou6 ŋia2]

She is more beautiful.

The same holds true for Mandarin and Cantonese in that another structure needs to be used when only one of the nouns being compared is mentioned. Note also that Teochew and Mandarin both use a pre-modifier (before the adjective) while Cantonese uses a post-modifier (after the adjective).

Mandarin

她比較漂亮

tā bǐjiào piàoliang

Cantonese

佢靚啲

keoi5 leng3 di1

There are two words which are intrinsically comparative in meaning, i.e. 贏 [ĩã5] "better" and 輸 [su1] "worse". They can be used alone or in conjunction with the 過-structure:

只領裙輸(過)許領。

[tsi2 nĩã2 kuŋ5 su1 kue3 hɨ2 nĩã2]

This skirt is not as good as that one.

我內個電腦贏伊個好多。

[ua2 lai6 kai7 tiaŋ6 nau2 ĩã5 i1 kai7 hoʔ2 tsoi7]

My computer (at home) is far better than his.

Note the use of the adverbial 好多 [hoʔ2 tsoi7] at the end of the sentence to express a higher degree.

The vocabulary of Teochew shares a lot of similarities with Cantonese, owing to their continuous contact with each other.[ambiguous] Like Cantonese, Teochew has a great deal of monosyllabic words.[citation needed] However, ever since the standardisation of Modern Standard Chinese, Teochew has absorbed a lot of Putonghua vocabulary, which is predominantly polysyllabic. In addition, Teochew varieties in Malaysia and Singapore have also borrowed extensively from Malay.

Teochew was romanised by the Provincial Education Department of Guangdong in 1960 to aid linguistic studies and the publication of dictionaries, although Pe̍h-ōe-jī can also be used because Christian missionaries invented it for the transcription of varieties of Southern Min.